


I Will Reach for the Living

by gamerfic



Series: In Sleep [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dreamsharing, F/M, First Time, Lucid Dreaming, POV First Person, Praise Kink, The Fade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-07
Updated: 2015-02-07
Packaged: 2018-03-10 20:54:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3303143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gamerfic/pseuds/gamerfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Skyhold hides many secrets waiting to be uncovered. The pursuit of one of its mysteries leads Lavellan and Solas into the Fade, and from there to an intimate moment. (Or: the one where Lavellan and Solas dream about being Tevinter jewel thieves.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Will Reach for the Living

I would never say it was good that a book hit Josephine in the head, but things might have been very different without the small leather-bound volume that tumbled from her shelf as we sat in her study. She had been trying to enlighten me about the inner workings of a family of Orlesian nobles who she thought could be persuaded to support the Inquisition. It wasn't going very well. Growing up hunting deer in the Free Marches for subsistence, then moving up into a role that still mainly involved hitting demons with a sword, hadn't really prepared me for the politics of the human nobility. The workers who were repairing something in the main hall and sending periodic, jarring bangs through the entire building also did nothing to help my concentration. As Josephine tried for at least the fourth time to clarify the webs of alliance among the feuding half-siblings sired by the family's thrice-married patriarch, an enormous crash rattled Skyhold's windows and walls. Books and scrolls shook themselves loose from the shelves, hitting the floor, the desk, and Josephine.

I rushed to the other side of her desk. "Are you hurt?"

"I'll be fine," said Josephine, wincing and rubbing at the small lump rising on her skull. She looked down at the offending book, which had landed in her lap. "I'm only grateful this wasn't _General History of the Tevinter Imperium._ "

"Do you want me to go out there and yell at someone for a while? I so rarely get the chance to be the fearsome and deeply offended Inquisitor."

She laughed. "That won't be necessary."

"Well, at least let me help you clean these up." I knelt to gather the fallen tomes. When I stood up to replace them, I noticed strange, faded glyphs etched into the back of the wooden shelf. The books had previously concealed them from anyone's view. "Josephine? What's this?"

"What are you talking about?" She got up from her chair and stood on tiptoe to peer at the markings. "I have no idea. I didn't even know anything was back there. Those books were left behind on the shelves by whoever held Skyhold before the Inquisition did."

I looked closer at the shelf and saw a gap between two boards where the aged wood had splintered away. "There's some sort of hidden compartment back here." Impulsively, I reached into it, hoping I wasn't about to stick my hand into some nest of bizarre and venomous insects. But the only thing I pulled out was a small metal box, which I set on Josephine's desk.

"Open it," she urged me, and I took the lid off. Inside was a tightly packed hoard of objects that I could tell were quite valuable even at a glance - a purse full of gold coins minted in Orlais, a handful of stray gems, a bundle of potion recipes written on tattered parchment in a precise hand, even a few runestones that made my fingertips tingle with power when I touched them.

"A supply cache," I said. "That's useful. I wonder if there are any more like it around Skyhold."

"The formulas alone will be invaluable to the Inquisition. I know your time is very precious, Inquisitor, but perhaps you could find someone else to search the keep for other caches."

"I'll see to it," I said. "I already know who I'm going to ask for help."

Just as I had suspected he would be, Solas was immediately fascinated by the mystery of the caches. "This is a glyph of concealment," he said, pointing at the rough sketch I'd made of the symbols from Josephine's bookshelves. "It's a Tevinter technique, from the Storm Age or before. The other glyph is defensive in nature. You're lucky it dispelled itself as the wood decayed. You could have been badly hurt."

"That's why I'm taking you along to find the next one," I said. "I'm sure you have ways of tracking these things down more easily than I could, and you can dispel the enchantments too."

He raised an eyebrow. "It seems as though you could simply ask me to do this for you."

"I know that. But life can't be all templar-fighting and rift-closing. Maybe I just want to go on a treasure hunt through Skyhold with you. Is that so wrong?"

"Of course not." He smiled, and the faraway look in his eyes told me he was already formulating a plan. "Find me here at dusk, then. It would be my pleasure to accompany you."

The soldiers of the Inquisition were lighting lanterns all around the courtyard when I returned to Solas that evening. Judging by the eagerness with which he greeted me, he was more than ready to embark on our shared task. On his back he wore a tightly cinched pack more suited to a long wilderness journey than a nighttime stroll through the keep. "What's this about?" I asked.

"You'll see." With a muttered word, he kindled an orb of blue light in his outstretched palm. "The light will glow more brightly in the presence of Tevinter magic. It should point us in the right direction."

"Then let's go." We set out into the main hall and began our search, walking along the battlements, meandering through the gardens, pausing to peer into every dusty corner or abandoned outbuilding we passed. If anybody thought it strange for us to be wandering around Skyhold by night, they said nothing. I'd discovered that a purposeful manner and the occasional curt nod of recognition went a long way toward convincing others that whatever I happened to be doing was official Inquisitor business into which they shouldn't pry. All the while the orb continued to glow steadily, revealing nothing new about our surroundings.

Eventually we found ourselves in a disused wing of the central keep. The Inquisition still wasn't large enough to fill this much living space, so for the time being these rooms remained in vacant disrepair. Our footsteps echoed in the cavernous darkness. The only light came from Solas's hand and from the faint moonbeams that peeked through the cracked, dirty windows. As we stood in a shadowy hallway, deciding which door to try next, I turned to him, wrapped my arms around his waist, and kissed him impulsively. "Alone at last," I murmured.

His posture went momentarily rigid, but then I felt his free arm slide around my shoulders. It hadn't been long at all since the night on his balcony when he had first told me he loved me. Since that time he had become more demonstrative with me, in private if not in public, but I still sometimes sensed a distance between us that he wasn't yet entirely willing to cross. "Is that what this was really about?" he asked.

"No. And yes. More than anything, I'd like to spend some time with you when we aren't both fighting for our lives."

"You could have simply asked me, you know," he said, sounding amused. "There's no need to resort to subterfuge."

"You call this subterfuge? You should have seen how the _da'len'nen_ used to do it back in my clan. 'Oh no, I lost my bow in the dark scary cave, won't you help me find it?' 'Ooh, yes, of course I will, and now that we're alone out here, let's play Dread Wolf hunts the halla.' _That_ would be subterfuge." Confusion stole across his face as he gently pulled away from me. "Oh. I suppose nobody played that game where you're from."

"You'd be surprised." Solas moved to the nearest door and pushed it open. Behind it was a large, empty room, probably meant to be a salon or a small ballroom. Carved wooden pillars supported its high ceiling, and windows on three of the four walls overlooked the mountains and the starry night sky. The orb flared brightly and bathed the room with its strange luminescence. "Something is here," he said.

We entered the ballroom and walked slowly around its perimeter, but the intensity of the orb's light didn't change again. "So what do we do next?" I asked.

"I'll show you." The glowing sphere floated free from Solas's hand and bobbed in lazy circles around a pillar. He dropped his backpack in the center of the room, and began to unpack an assortment of blankets. Soon he had assembled a makeshift bed just big enough for two on the cold marble floor. "There. We'll enter the Fade and let whatever dreams we might find in this place point our way to the cache."

"You can't be serious."

The unnatural blue light that filled the room turned his sudden grin almost wolfish. "And here I thought you wanted to go on a treasure hunt with me, _ma sa'lath_."

"I still do. I just didn't expect it would take me into the Fade." I crossed the room and sat down next to him on the bedroll. "But I suppose you're the one with the plan. Lead the way."

I tried to make myself comfortable on the floor while Solas cast the spells that would guide us on the next phase of our journey. With a wave of his hand he extinguished the orb, plunging the room into darkness. The blankets rustled as he lay down beside me. I was unable to resist the urge to wind my limbs around him and kiss his face. "Not now, _vhenan_ ," he said, sounding distracted. "Dream with me instead." I rolled over, trying to set aside my frustration. Within moments I could tell by his deep and even breathing that he was already asleep. _How does he do that so quickly? It must come with practice._ I looked out the windows at the faint outlines of the mountains by night, at the scattered stars shining down as cold and hard as the marble floor beneath me, and took my comfort in the long warm line of Solas's body behind me and the weight of his arm draped across my chest. Before I knew it, sleep had come to carry me away.

* * *

I am alone in my mistress's bedchamber and I know that I don't have very much time. For the moment, she has busied herself with greeting the guests at her fête. Still, I know from long experience in her household that she might excuse herself at any moment and retreat here to refresh herself, gossip, or even conduct a secret tryst. I need to act now or lose my opportunity.

I pull off my apron and my servant's garb and leave it crumpled in the back of my mistress's wardrobe. I won't ever need to wear it again. In its place I don one of her many fine gowns, making sure to choose one that she hasn't worn in some time and that isn't distinctive enough for her to recognize as her own amidst the crowd of revelers. I sit down in front of her mirror - _round ears, no_ vallaslin, _am I human in this dream?_ \- to put up my hair with her jeweled pins and golden combs, to adorn myself with her expensive cosmetics. The gem-studded mask that is a necessity at any Orlesian ball completes my disguise.

Then I open my large silken bag and gather the things I have come here for: the private correspondence, the ledgers and diaries, the coins, the gemstones, even my mistress's personal signet ring. In a final fit of pique, I take the ornate sapphire and silver necklace given to her by a recently rejected suitor - worth more than three generations of my family will earn in all their lifetimes, and she shoved it in the back of a drawer and forgot about it like it was nothing - and place it around my own neck. I tuck the bag under my arm and leave without looking back, knowing that I have set in motion the avalanche that will carry me down the side of this mountain and into whatever comes next.

No one meets me as I descend the stairs. The sounds of revelry rise up before me as I approach the edges of the celebration. Just outside the ballroom, in one of the small alcoves where guests may withdraw to rest from their dancing and mingle in relative privacy, I stop and place my hand against one of the smooth stones of the wall. I glance around to make sure no one is watching, then let my magic trickle through my fingers until the glyphs I set there earlier flash brightly beneath my touch - _to the left of the double doors on the western wall, about eight bricks over at the level of my eyes, I need to remember this when I wake!_ \- and reveal the secret compartment. I seize its contents and deposit them into my bag, all the gold and gems and documents and valuables that we have so carefully collected and that we will take with us on the rest of our journey. With a final wave of my hand, I close the compartment again. Only one last task remains before I leave this place for good.

The ballroom is filled with people in their finery and their most dramatic masks, drinking and dancing and chattering and making the petty deals and brief alliances that they think are so important. Stupid Orlesians, who still believe that an extravagant display of their so-called refinement will be enough to give them the power to hold this fortress. They will fail, and it will fall, as so many empires have failed before them. _How do I know this?_ Perhaps Tevinter will be there to pick up the pieces when Orlais finally loses its grip, but it won't matter to me. What matters is the price of the jewels and the secrets I now carry under my arm, and how they will buy my family's freedom - and my own freedom - in Minrathous.

I see him, then, across the polished marble floor where dancers whirl and cavort, leaning against a pillar and waiting for me. His dark eyes glitter behind his golden mask and I know him immediately: my lover, my accomplice, my unexpected treasure. _And behind those eyes I know Solas too, looking back at me from his own place within this dream._ He takes in the sight of me with unabashed hunger, appreciating the elegant dress, the ostentatious jewelry, the secret scheme we share. It was foolish of me to include him in my plans instead of killing him without regrets the first time he caught me stealing. Perhaps it was even more foolish of him to go along with me. But the deed is done, and now we have no choice but to make our escape together.

He extends his hand to me as I approach. The minstrels are tuning up for a new song, the party guests shuffling into place for another dance. The request in his posture is clear - _one dance together, before we leave this place._ It's risky and short-sighted - and I already know I won't refuse him.

I take his arm and let him lead me to the floor. The music begins. We move through well-learned steps together, my own motions clumsier than I would like thanks to the heavy bag I still carry. Our only points of contact are our hands pressed chastely together and his eyes never once leaving mine. I want to stop the dance, to tear his mask off and kiss him, to throw him to the floor and claim him as my own in front of all these unsuspecting people. Soon this will all be over and there will be no more secrets. No more spying, no more hiding my magic or my status as a Laetan. No more stolen moments in stairwells or late-night assignations in pantries and abandoned salons. I will take him to Tevinter with me and we will use these ill-gotten secrets to buy the life that we deserve. He will be mine, and I will be his, and together we will be free.

* * *

I woke without warning, uncomfortable on the hard floor, shaking the remnants of the dream from my mind. The moon was higher in the sky now, its faint silvery glow illuminating the dusty ballroom. My heart pounded and my belly fluttered with the aftermath of intense emotion that still lingered in my body as a low flame of unanticipated arousal. At some point I had twisted around in my sleep and moved so close to Solas that my face was nearly touching his. I could see that he was also awake and looking at me with a faint, self-satisfied smile. "It's on the western wall," I blurted out. "At the level of my eyes."

"Yes. To the left of the doors."

I laughed in exhilaration. "I can't believe it. That actually worked."

"Of course it did," he said in that tone of voice unique to him that toed the line between confidence and arrogance, and I couldn't help laughing again.

"That was amazing," I said. " _Ma serannas_." My mouth found his in the darkness. Whether it was the euphoria of success, or the residue of the pent-up passions that our dream-selves had felt, or the simple fact of Solas finally arriving at some long-considered conclusion about me, I could tell that this time nothing would distract us from each other. His hands were all over me, tangling in my hair, fumbling with my clothing, cupping my breasts. I pulled his clothes off as well and we were naked beside each other at long last.

He slid his hand between us, between my legs, and stroked me there - slowly and gently at first, then with increasing fervor, his fingers dipping in and out of me until I bucked against his touch and came with a gasp that reverberated in the empty hall. I rolled onto my back and stared up into the vaulted ceiling, trying to catch my breath. He withdrew his hand and positioned himself above me - yet still he held back, even as I felt him hard and ready against my inner thigh.

"Please," I whispered, "please, Solas, _ar isalan na_ ," and then cried out softly when he entered me. What followed was fast, and desperate, and not especially gentle - nothing like what I had expected, and everything I had wanted. It was not long at all until I felt him spill inside me and he nearly collapsed on top of me. I kissed his neck, caressed his back, murmured _"Ar lath ma, vhenan"_ into his ear and felt more than heard him say it back to me against my bare skin.

At last we pulled apart to lie beside each other with our hands still intertwined. I could practically hear his thoughts racing, considering what all of it meant. Finally, when the silence became too much for me to bear, I spoke. "That was the first time, wasn't it? At least on this side of the Veil."

"It was," he said. Then, more quietly, after a pause: "It's been a long time for me."

"I couldn't tell."

"Flatterer." He turned his head to kiss me once more. Then he said, in a voice so low as to be nearly inaudible, "I only want to be what you deserve, _vhenan._ "

"You already are."

He cleared his throat and looked away, seemingly unsure of how to respond. Then he let go of my hand, pulled himself unsteadily to his feet, and walked toward the wall where our shared dream had told us the cache would be. I stretched out on the bedroll, enjoying the way that the moonlight glinted off his pale and exposed skin, feeling languid and satiated. Magic flared briefly at his fingertips, and I heard the scrape of stone against stone as he broke the enchantment and opened the hidden compartment.

Soon he returned to me, carrying a burlap sack. I sat up. "That's what was inside?" I asked.

"Yes." He took his place next to me on the blankets and untied the frayed, knotted twine that held the bag closed. Most of its contents were similar to what I'd found inside the first cache - coins, gems, a few scrawled papers and small magic items - but it was the necklace laid out on top of it all that made us both stop and stare. Even in this low light, its sapphires still glittered in their silver settings - just as we'd seen them shine in our shared dream.

We both looked at the necklace in silence for a while. _How did it end up in there? Regardless, if the cache didn't get emptied out the way that we dreamed it did, that means..._ "She didn't get away with it," I finally said.

"No," Solas replied, starting to sound distant again, "no, I don't think either of them did."

"So if what we saw was just someone else's dream, then what really happened to them?"

"I doubt we'll ever know. Dreams so rarely show the pure and honest truth. Those dreamers may have been captured and treated as foreign spies would be, or the whole thing may only have ever been a servant girl's wild fantasy. No matter what, it's been two Ages or more since Orlais held this castle. Whatever happened here, history has forgotten it by now."

"But the Fade didn't."

His expression suddenly softened. "No, it didn't. And their dreams live on through us." He picked up the necklace and frowned as he studied its intricate metalwork. "This is of elven make. _Fenedhis lasa._ The Orlesians steal everything."

"Looks like it found its way back to elves in the end," I said.

"You're right." He fixed his gaze on me, and my pulse quickened again when I saw what his face contained - affection, and respect, and a fascination so deep and all-consuming that I wondered what I had done to earn it. "Of course you're right." Without warning, he reached for me and draped the necklace around my neck, so that it lay heavy and cold against my bare chest. Reverently, he kissed my hands, my neck, my collarbone, my breasts. "As beautiful as any jewel in Arlathan," he said softly, in his strange dialect of Elvhen that I still sometimes struggled to understand, and I knew he wasn't referring to the necklace anymore.

After that, neither of us really spoke again that night - or at least not in words, lost as we were in each other's bodies and in the gentler and slower rhythms that we soon discovered together. If we shared any other dreams after I finally fell asleep in his arms, I forgot them as soon as the morning sun crept over the mountaintops and woke me. I stretched and smiled as I thought of the night before, and when I rolled over I was somehow both unsurprised and disappointed to discover that Solas was no longer there. But I touched the necklace I still wore, felt its weight on my chest again, and knew that all I needed to give him now was time. His spirit called to mine now, as mine had called to him through the Fade. I could be patient now. In waking or in dreaming, I knew he would return to me soon.

**Author's Note:**

> Story title taken from the song ["Leave Me Here" by Hem.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DQ7huThNuk)


End file.
